Evolution
by 14karatgold
Summary: If you're looking back on a long road, take pride in the changes within you because they're what got you through it. Garnet series.
1. Dual Persona

Evolution

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Dual Persona

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Night and day were once the same to me. They both just were different ways of showing the passage of time. Those meaningless, predictable days, Time was Life, and Life was Time. There was no divergence, no line, between the two. I lived day-by-day, learning things that did not matter outside my short, sheltered life, but they mattered to me because I was told that they mattered.

…I wasted so much time…

Inside the castle, those things were the center of my life. They were seeded, protected and pruned by Mother. They flourished and blossomed because of Mother. My progress in my royal life gave her pride, and her pride gave me definition, however shallow it proved to be in retrospect. It _had_ to be the only thing that mattered.

It took me ten years to realize I was wasting my time.

Within a few days of breaking down those castle walls, the ones in my mind began to follow. A few days washed away all that training—that pruning. I think on that idea with a newer, wiser mind.

I only began to realize my potential after evolving into—but not really _becoming—_someone new. Dagger wasn't a new persona—she was the beginning of a new, wiser, _shinier _Garnet. A Garnet that glowed beyond the bounds of shallow definition as a princess. It isn't even fair to think of that new name in the third person. I am Garnet; I am Dagger—two names for the same being, the same mind, and the same mistakes.

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Please review. I'm really only just getting back into Fanfiction after a long (rather pointless) hiatus. I would really love some feedback, positive or negative. Whichever floats your boat is fine.

kt


	2. Black Lace

Evolution

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Black Lace

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At one time, the idea would have seemed impossible to me, but as I looked down at him and wept, I knew things were different. I watched him walk determinedly and willingly to the edge of an inescapable pit, and I knew. Death was possible. Losing someone important to you was possible.

It didn't really hit me when Mother died. I had known for most of my life that I would succeed her after her death, but it was more than that. I think it may have been because I had known—but not really accepted—that there was no other way for her mutation into this dark, alien woman to end. In the growing portion of sensibility in my mind, I was expecting it around every corner—either her death or mine—and so when it came, I wasn't terribly surprised. Sad, but not surprised enough to mourn with too much fervor.

But when you think you've done it—that you've _won_—and you still watch someone you care for immensely walk to their demise with an insufferable—seemingly impossible—_smirk _on their face, then…there's no expecting that.

From miles away, I watched a tiny, blue pinprick launch himself over the edge and that was when I denied it. It had just happened, oh sure. He had just launched himself over the precipice of an incredibly long drop, but he would come home in a matter of days, maybe weeks. No problem…

The work-filled, stressful, lonely days were passed alone, and though I never truly forgot, the issues that cropped up within an hour of each other took up most of my conscious mind.

My subconscious mind, however, was another matter. Hope and memories of him dominated my dreams and gave me the means to suffer through another, boring day of politics.

It amazes me that I've come to think of it that way—Boring.

It was what I had been bred for, what I had looked forward to as a child, but after all that traveling and excitement in learning about both myself and the world outside me, politics became nothing more than a dull and almost lifeless occupation.

And so the days passed in and out, much as they had before I was 'kidnapped': with little deviation and even less color. There seemed to be no way to die in this life, save from a sheer lack of suitable stimulation.

But then a message came for me, from the simple address 'An old friend,' and I tore it open with butterflies in my stomach and an un-queenly squeal daring to escape from my throat.

_He's back!_ _He's home! _

What guilty disappointment I felt when I realized the letter was not from that friend, but from the unsure, curious sons of another, telling me that their father had died with content eyes and a pride-filled smile on his face.

I allowed myself a hollow laugh at that.

So caught up had I been in my own problems that I had forgotten about my friends that had supported me the whole way. Was I nothing more than the empty, naïve shell that I had been before? After all, I had forgotten all about the short life span of one of us because from my point of view (here, in the dull castle), death seemed impossible! I _was _no better than I had been before.

On the whole, I never truly expected Vivi to stop, even when it was told to my face that black mages were made with an expedient expiration date. It was one of those things that you just shove to the back of your mind because it doesn't matter at the time. To sound like a common townsperson (something I take pride in, now), 'Just throw it and forget about it,' which is precisely what I did.

Too bad I never realized it was a boomerang until it had already slapped me in the face.

Then I mourned.

Then I realized how long it had been.

Then I cried for everyone: Vivi, Mother, Zidane, and even myself.

It was then that I donned a flimsy black dress. The day that letter came began my renaissance—my renewed acquaintance, as it were—with reality.

I allowed myself to mourn for them for an immeasurable amount of time. I washed out my wounds with tears and allowed them to finally heal, for good, until I once again found the strength to don even my heaviest pearl-white gown.

Which I wore to the theatre that night.

My black lace dress tore away my screen against reality and returned me to all that I had learned on that long, winding adventure—things I had involuntarily hidden from myself along with the knowledge of Zidane's 'demise.'

My black lace dress brought me back to myself and gave me a reward for my patience.

My black lace dress brought all of us home.


End file.
